The Objectors

Lesson 46 said the count of six is a doxographic convention rather than a census, and that systems excluded by it argued in the same idiom. This lesson takes one of the excluded.

The name. The lexicon's entry for cārvāka gives, first, a Rākṣasa of the Mahābhārata — a friend of Duryodhana who took the form of a mendicant brahmin, reviled Yudhiṣṭhira as he entered Hāstinapura in triumph, was detected, and was killed by the real brahmins. Only second does it give "N. of a materialistic philosopher, whose doctrines are embodied in the Bārhaspatya-sūtras."